On the Variation of Species, with Especial Reference to the Insecta

rich meadows and teeming ravines, as a geographical difference is à priori anticipated between the hard, sturdy mountaineer and the more enervated denizen of the plain. A daisy, gathered on the cultivated lawn, has usually attained a greater degree of perfection and luxuriance than its companion from the sterile heath; and the bramble which chokes up the ditches of the sheltered hedgerow, wears a very different aspect from its stunted brother of the hills.

Nor is this dependency on external circumstances less apparent in the animal kingdom also,--the domesticated races of which every agriculturist is aware are capable of modification, artificially, to an almost unlimited extent; and which exhibit, when even in a state of nature, nearly as great a variety, from purely natural causes, as they have been proved to do when subjected to the laws and routine of agrarian science. Take the sheep, for example, of Dartmoor or Wales, and compare them with those from the wolds of Lincolnshire and th